A modifier question tests whether an opening describing phrase points to the right person or thing. Read that phrase and name what it describes, because the sentence’s main noun must follow the phrase. Then look past owners’ names to find each choice’s main noun. If a title or description adds extra information, cross it out and check the remaining sentence. In the middle of a sentence, a comma that opens extra information needs another comma to close it.
Hints
- Hint 1
Start with the opening phrase ending in “natural history.” Ask what was designed this way.
- Hint 2
Find “captivated,” then cross out any extra name or description between the main noun and that verb. What punctuation marks surround the words you removed?
Step-by-step
Match the noun, then check the commas
Step 1Name what was designed
Designed to be both a practical treatise and a poetic reflection on natural history comes before a comma and the blank. What was designed to serve those two purposes? A field guide was, so the phrase describes the book. An opening modifier, a describing phrase, must describe the main noun right after its comma.
- Step 2
Test the writer and the dependent opening
Which starts put the book in that spot and give us a complete sentence? Henry Armitage wrote puts the writer, not the book, first, so it makes him a practical treatise and a poetic reflection. Starting with While makes the words that follow unable to stand alone, and the sentence has no other part that can complete them.
- Step 3
Check the title’s closing comma
The version starting Henry Armitage’s celebrated field guide has the right main noun: guide, while Armitage’s only tells us whose. What happens when we read to captivated? The comma after guide opens the book’s title as extra information, but there’s no closing comma before the verb. Crossing out that title leaves a complete sentence about the guide captivating readers, so the extra title needs a comma on each side.
- Step 4
Test the description between commas
In the version starting The Naturalist’s Companion, the book is the main noun and Henry Armitage’s celebrated field guide sits between two commas. What remains if we cross out that description and both commas? The title connects directly to its verb: The Naturalist’s Companion captivated nineteenth-century readers with its meticulous observations and lyrical prose. Choice C.